Thursday, bloody Thursday

I'm having to work the Service Desk Thursday because only one person shows up. The line is backed up like a toilet at a fat camp.

At the next register over, some man trying to return stuff he bought with food stamps is DEMANDING in strident tones a receipt so that he can prove that $2.48 of the government's money went back onto the card. Now, for most refunds, the customer does not get a receipt. You only get ones for credit card refunds. EBT, which is what food stamps are, (Electronic Benefit Transfer) does NOT get a receipt. Still, this fool wants a receipt.

While he's showing out, this woman, this awful piece of humanity who deserves to be slow-roasted in Hades for all eternity and then sentenced to die, comes up. She starts screaming for the first-aid kit. The other girl gets the kit and keeps trying to convince the man that he doesn't get a receipt.

The woman, who we find out has a daughter with a small cut on her hand, starts screaming again about our "lack of compassion" over her daughter. The other girl asks her to please wait for 30 seconds until she can handle the man (who's still yelling at her too, by the way) and then she'll give her the full attention.

OH BUT NO! "Don't you dare look away!" this evil creature snaps. Then, to make things worse, some harridan in a wheelchair cart rolls in and starts screeching about taking the kid to the ER for stitches and a tetanus shot.

Now, we'd already paged one CODE WHITE to the service desk. CODE WHITE is customer accident. No one responded, and we had three people literally screaming the house down - the fool wanting a receipt, who finally left when it penetrated his thick skull that he wasn't getting one; the woman with the kid; and the harpy in the wheelchair, who wasn't related to anyone.

I page another CODE WHITE. No one comes. The woman with the kid throws another tantrum because no one has come to show concern over her child "who may faint from blood loss." The old biddy in the chair is screeching about calling 911 and getting an ambulance to take her to the ER. And then the woman starts up again about "sterile gauze" and iodine and bandages.

She's shouting the place down. We're helpless, and the customers are trying to edge their way around them to get refunds. They really don't care what's going on, they just want to get a refund and leave. It is obvious that the girl isn't gushing blood, but to this woman, the kid just lost an arm.

I page a third CODE WHITE. The phone rings and the display shows MGR OFC. "I'm sorry you don't have a radio, but someone is responding. Please don't page again." HMPPFH! Well, they should have gotten here sooner!!!!!! And three minutes later, a manager finally arrives.

Forty-five minutes later .... the woman starts really getting nasty. Here's her list of demands: A copy of the accident report, the manager's who took the report, the store manager, all of our names, the old harridan in the chair, the EMTs who were called, the store's lawyers, etc.

Now, it came out that she claims the kid cut herself on a grocery cart. If that did happen, that would be a first. I'm wondering if the woman didn't cut the kid herself and then cause a ruckus just to get a check out of Wal-Mart? Curiouser and curiouser...